Those close to Justin Bieber have grave fears for the singer. Photo / Getty Images
Those close to Justin Bieber have grave fears for the singer. Photo / Getty Images
The dissolution of a long-term love affair forged in his teens, a quickie marriage to a model, a cancelled tour due to fears he would overdose, paparazzi photos of him looking like he woke up on the wrong side of the floor, and photographic proof he can't grow a proper beard.
It has been a rough couple of months for Justin Bieber, with rumours flying that he has slipped into heavy drug use, and light facial hair abuse.
While there is no denying that Bieber has exhibited bad behaviour in the past, should we be worried for him at the moment, or is he just a normal 20-something who has found love, shunned public perceptions, and stopped giving a fig whether or not his fans are on board anymore?
A SHORT HISTORY OF BIEBER'S FIRST NAUGHTY PERIOD: 2012-14
Bieber's first naughty period started in 2012, when he was accused of drag racing in a Ferrari, through his gated community of Calabasas; a charge that was again levelled against him on Memorial Day in May, 2013. Now, it needs to be stated that Bieber seems to have been studying the Bart Simpson book of rebellion throughout this stage of his life, and that most of the acts he was alleged to have committed between 2012-14 are the standard rites of passage for bored teenagers the world over. The descriptions of specific luxury cars and places may seem like they belong only to those who breathe in rare air, but these details matter the least.
Case in point: July 2013 saw a drunk Bieber urinate into a mop bucket in a nightclub restaurant kitchen while yelling "f*** Bill Clinton", a confusing political stance to commit to some 12 years after he was ousted from office.
It gets sillier. In January 2014, Bieber again made headlines for the Bart Simpson crime of egging his neighbour's house.
"It was about 7.30pm, and I was in my house upstairs with my daughter," the neighbour told E! News after the horrifying egging. "We began to hear something hitting the house, like rocks and things crashing into the window. We went to our outside balcony and saw (Bieber) standing in my front yard, ripping eggs at my house."
Let's pause. The play by play makes this seem like a civil war diary, only with more pathos.
Now, this is undeniably funny. Really think about this scenario. The idea of Bieber gleefully yelling "Yeah, I got another one for you" before launching more eggs is straight from every teen movie ever. That there was no toilet papering of trees or fertiliser face drawn on the lawn suggests a distinct lack of preparation on Justin's part.
Obviously, because he is a reasonable adult man, the neighbour promptly sued Bieber for $80,000 worth of damage to his property, which would suggest that JB has quite the pitching arm on him. Or that these were dinosaur eggs.
Biebs ramped up the bad behaviour in Miami a few weeks after #EGGgate, when he copped his first official arrest (you always remember your first) for resisting arrest, driving drunk, and with an expired licence. Bieber was drag racing his friend in a rented Lamborghini at 4am because what else do you do in Miami at that time? According to his arrest sheet, which Miami PD posted on their Twitter feed, there was "an odour of alcohol emanating" from Bieber and he had a "flushed face (and) bloodshot eyes." He was belligerent to police, asking reasonable questions such as: "Why the f*** are you doing this?", "What the f*** did I do?", "Why did you stop me?" and, most hilariously, "I ain't got no f***ing weapons," as if that was ever in doubt.
After the arrest hit the internet, Bieber compared himself to Michael Jackson, posting twin pictures of the two: Bieber sitting on top of an SUV, waving to fans after leaving police custody, and Jackson in a similar pose after pleading not guilty to charges of child molestation. He captioned the picture with a less-than-cryptic: "What more can they say?"
The intended message of police harassment and media scrutiny was clear, but it wasn't the best comparison for the young star to be making.
Perhaps Biebs was simply doubling down on the MJ comparisons he received the previous year, after getting himself a pet monkey, a lifelong companion he was forced to abandon at German customs when he didn't have the necessary paperwork to bring him into the country. It was also suggested he bought the monkey on the black market; this and his callous abandonment of the pet sparked widespread outrage, which he quelled by posting a cute photo of him snuggling the little guy shortly after customs seized him, suggesting he had been returned. He hadn't; it was an old photo. Bieber was charged $8000 for the quarantining of the animal, which wasn't paid, causing visa headaches for his management the next time they attempted to enter the country.
Further visa headaches came in November that year, when Bieber was charged with vandalism, after being caught spray painting graffiti on the side of a hotel in Brazil. Short of having sprayed "El Biebo" and yelling "eat my shorts" to the police, this is the most Bart Simpson of his crimes.
Having said that, he was also photographed leaving a Brazilian brothel that same month, something Bart Simpson would never do — unless of course, you include the episode where he worked at the burlesque house.
HE IS RISEN: BIEBER REBORN
January 2015 marked a new year, and the perfect time for Justin Bieber to make some public resolutions. He appeared on Ellen, his first interview in some years, and addressed his recent run of bad behaviour in a way that seemed sincere and embarrassed. The pair chatted about his forthcoming Comedy Central Roast, a bold move that suggested Bieber found Bieber as ridiculous as you or I.
"I think it's cool to laugh at yourself — I've done some things that might not have been the greatest … I just want to be able to laugh about it, and just kind of own up to some of these things," he said.
He clarified further in a starkly confessional video posted to Facebook.
Here we go
Posted by Justin Bieber on Wednesday, 28 January 2015
"I didn't want to come off arrogant or conceited, or basically how I've been acting the past year, year and a half," Bieber confessed, speaking of his nerves before the TV appearance. "I'm not who I was pretending to be."
That's a bold statement. It seemed Bieber was trying to prove he was no longer the sweet kid the world wanted him to be, and had overcorrected.
"Often we pretend to be something we're not as a cover up of what we're truly feeling inside, and there was a lot of feelings going on in there. Just being young and growing up in this business is hard. Just growing up in general is hard," he said.
Coupled with the Comedy Central Roast and a very public renewal of his faith, a main tenet of his early squeaky-clean image, Bieber's road to redemption was paved with promise. He linked himself with Australian mega-church Hillsong, flying Down Under in June 2015 to appear at one of the massive worship sessions, and prepared a radio-friendly album with a purpose, which he titled Purpose, because subtlety is vastly overrated.
Everyone loves a comeback story, and Bieber's series of sincere mea culpas, willingness to admit and accept blame for his actions, and ability to pump out a handful of catchy, Timberlake-esque tunes saw him back on the straight and narrow, and back on radio.
"I was rebelling a little bit," Bieber told Seventeen magazine that May. "I was getting cockier and cockier. I didn't have people to check me. I looked back and I was disappointed in myself."
It's an enviable, adult sentiment, and he deserves praise for not placing blame anywhere else.
"I looked back and I was disappointed in myself," he continued. "You have to own up to the mistakes. You have to say, 'I'm sorry if I've let you down.'"
He seemed sincerely sorry. A few months later, he released his next single, a dance-hall-tinged track, titled Sorry.
Bieber's drug intake has been reported on since at least January 2013, when a photo of him allegedly holding a joint hit the internet. He made light of the situation the following month on Saturday Night Live, without explicitly admitting he smoked marijuana. The audience either giggled or shrugged.
At the time of his Miami arrest, a year later, he allegedly admitted to police to having used marijuana, alcohol, and prescription pills (his mother's Xanax, tabloids reported); a charge his reps later denied, accusing the police of fabricating this admission.
But while this can all be seen as youthful indulgence, an interview with his manager, Scooter Braun, last month indicates that Bieber's drug intake last year became so dire he was pulled off tour for fear of a fatal overdose.
"There was a time when I would go to sleep almost every night — when he had the money to fly away from me — and I was worried every night that I was going to lose him," Braun said on a podcast.
"That was the time when I was telling him he's not allowed to work. He used to yell and scream at me and he wanted to put music out. He wanted to tour, but I thought if he did that, he would die. So I just refused. We weren't making any money, it wasn't like I was trying to take advantage — I didn't want him to work, I wanted him to get healthy.
"I thought he was going to die. I thought he was going to sleep one night and that he would have so much crap in his system that he would not wake up the next morning. I was trying to monitor him from a distance, I would fly after him at times, all kinds of different stuff."
Braun cancelled the Purpose world tour last July, citing "unforeseen circumstances". The tour had also been banned in China, with the country's culture bureau explaining it was to "purify the Chinese performance environment".
HAS BIEBER JUST FOUND LOVE?
Bieber's recent shotgun wedding suggests a lack of forethought, but in actuality, his relationship with Hailey Baldwin stretches back to 2009 when he was introduced to her by her father backstage at the US Today show. As with everything Bieber has done since, this meeting was captured on camera, and betrays a distinct lack of chemistry between the two. True love never travels a smooth path.
Rumours of an actual romantic relationship between Bieber and Baldwin first flamed in December 2014, but were quickly shut down by Bieber, who posted a photo of the pair in a car with the caption: "People are crazy. I'm super single and this is my good friend u would know otherwise."
The official record stated they dated for a month or two from December 2015 to January 2016, during one of his off-periods with actor and pop star Selena Gomez.
"We are not an exclusive couple," Baldwin told E! at the time. "He's about to go on tour. Relationships at this age are already complicated, but I don't really like to talk about it because it's between me and him."
Despite reports to the contrary, Baldwin denies using drugs, saying of her and her friends: "Because we have parents who did it before us, and warned us of the lifestyle, we stay away from it."
This is a good sign. But there are those who speculate that Bieber's recent split with Gomez may have knocked him off the wagon.
A recent video where he greets fans certainly seems like he is under the influence of drugs, while paparazzi photos of him and Baldwin in London looking blissed out — Bieber in a tie-dyed hoodie — are reminiscent of similar loved-up photos of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love taken in 1992.
Paparazzi photos can't be trusted to be an accurate representation of someone's actual state: by their very nature they are candid and unflattering. Still, look at those photos. I see a couple in love. I also see a couple with bird nest hair, the clothing of those who live in a bus and follow The Grateful Dead from field to field, the glazed look of a couple who seem unaware they will be photographed everywhere they go.
This could be love. It could be drugs. It could be the power of Jesus: both Bieber and Baldwin are devout Christians and heavily involved in the Hillsong church.
But this relationship may not be as ill-considered as seems.
"I know that in the past I've hurt people and said things that I didn't mean to make them happy in the moment," Bieber told GQ in 2016.
